Around the World in 80 Books

To celebrate the one-year anniversary of our World Eco-fiction Series, I present "Around the World in 80 Books: A Guide to Ecological and Climate Themes in Fiction," an article at Medium.com. Themes include harsh survival, advocacy, veneration of the world around us, the slow apocalypse, the haunted, the weird, and the psychological. It's an eclectic and diverse range of stories, set around the world, on every continent. Also, Dragonfly is blending the original spotlight on climate change authors with the newer world fiction series, now that these similar author spotlights are on the same domain.

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The Water Cure, Sophie Mackintosh

There is a house on an island, alone by the sea. Inside live three girls, Grace, Lia and Sky, with their parents Mother and King. Outside, beyond the sea and the horizon, there is a “toxin‑filled world”. To understand what toxins are, and indeed for their knowledge of everything else, the girls have always deferred to King. Their world is complete. And then, one day, he is gone.

Imagine a world very close to our own: where women are not safe in their bodies, where desperate measures are required to raise a daughter. This is the story of Grace, Lia, and Sky kept apart from the world for their own good and taught the terrible things that every woman must learn about love. And it is the story of the men who come to find them - three strangers washed up by the sea, their gazes hungry and insistent, trailing desire and destruction in their wake.

Hypnotic and compulsive, The Water Cure is a fever dream, a blazing vision of suffering, sisterhood, and transformation.

Quotes

Ursula Le Guin is so important, because she pushed the idea that science fiction, or speculative fiction, can be a space for being really thoughtful, and for really exploring ideas. And also for daring to imagine a version of us that is better—and, in some ways, worse—than our present selves. I think she was unmatched. She was a great novelist, and a great evangelist for the novel. Earthsea is a huge influence, as is The Dispossessed. –Marlon James